OSMC Media Center and NAS using Raspberry Pi

OSMC Media Center and NAS in a single Raspberry Pi

http://www.mediamilan.com/tutos/osmc-media-center-and-nas-raspberry-pi/

Free CAD Programs as Microsoft VISIO Alternatives

CADE

CADE is a compact but powerful 2D vector editor for Windows. It includes basic Visio functionality and could be used to create diagrams, network diagrams, flowcharts, schemas, maps and so much more. You can use predefined blocks, primitive shapes, raster and vector images. The collection of blocks and it's attributes could be modified and extended. Working in CADE requires no particular drawing skills.

http://www.weresc.com/cade.php

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Dia Diagram Editor

http://dia-installer.de

Simpler than CADE.

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GLIFFY

A web-based solution so you do not need to download and install the program on your computer.

https://www.gliffy.com/products/online/

How To Restore Files Using Hyper Backup Explorer in Synology

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbOglD86GbQ

What the video does not say is you cannot simply attach the external drive into a new Synology box or the same box that has been reformatted and its OS reinstalled. You have to use a computer and this Hyper Backup Explorer program to extract the data from the backup datastore, put this extracted files onto the same external drive if there is still free space, then plug this external drive into the NAS, move the extracted data onto the internal drive in their respective shares, the format the external drive and reconfigure the NAS to use it as its own external drive for Hyperbackup package.

This is a huge time-consuming hassle if you have multi-terabytes of data. If is probably cheaper to have 2 Synology NASes running and use sync to sync the NASes.

Installing Debian 9 in a VMWare virtual machine using Raspberry-Pi-Desktop

Installing the guest OS itself is pretty straight forward. Just boot from the ISO of the raspberry-pi-desktop installer.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspberry-pi-desktop/

Raspbian is the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s official supported operating system, based on Debian with the latest version running Debian 9 code-named Stretch.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/

After the guest OS has been installed, it is customary to update the OS with the latest files by running two commands.

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

This only updates the OS itself but does not install any specific drivers for the virtual hardware that is VMWare Player or Workstation. These specific drivers plus other extra enhancement features are called VMWare Tools. For example, with VMWare Tools installed in the Raspbian OS guest, the guest can share a folder on the host side, basically creating a network between guest and host for the purpose of sharing files.

http://partnerweb.vmware.com/GOSIG/Debian_9.html

Open VM Tools is the open source implementation of VMware Tools. As stated in the support page, VMware recommends using the Open VM Tools included with Debian 9 instead of using its own VMware Tools for Linux which I suspect is designed for the generic Linux kernel as oppose to the specific distribution.

The support page says to add the following line to the /etc/apt/sources.list file.

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ stretch main contrib

However, given that the Debian 9 used for Raspian OS (i.e raspberry-pi-desktop) is customized for the Raspberry Pi devices, this deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ stretch main contrib line has already been added to the /etc/apt/sources.list file.

Therefore, within Raspbian, you would only need to run the following command:

$ sudo apt-get update 

$ sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools

Raspbian will go to the online depository to grab the Debian 9 Open VM Tools and install it automatically!

One of the things you can do after VMWare Tools has been installed is the ability to share a folder between the guest Raspbian OS and the host OS such as Windows. After you have specified where the shared folder is on the host, go to /mnt/hgfs folder on the Raspbian side and you will see this shared folder on the host.

A good video on how to install VMWare Tools is this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJPqM9QYeR0

The help page that the author of the video uses is this:

https://communities.vmware.com/message/2682930#2682930

If this page is not found, below is a copy of the instructions

You can just install VMware Tools in a terminal window in Jessie, you can stay in graphical mode, no need to switch.

It sounds like that the vmware host guest share drivers are broken in the open vmtools variant of Jessie, this is also an issue in a few versions of ubuntu.
Guess they might share some code there.

The easiest solution is to install the vmware tools version that comes with VMware Fusion.
But before you do, completely remove the open vm tools variant from debian.

sudo apt-get purge open-vm-tools
sudo apt-get purge open-vm-tools-desktop

then select install VMware Tools from the virtual machine menu in Fusion. Note that this just presents a CDrom to the guest, so you will have to install

If you're not sure on how-to do that, then here's a script I've used in the past:


#!/bin/bash 
 
sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get upgrade 
echo "Do go and mount your cdrom from the VMware menu" 
echo "press any key to continue" 
read -n 1 -s 
mount /dev/cdrom 
cd /media/cdrom0 
cp VMwareTools-*.tar.gz /tmp 
cd /tmp 
tar xvzf VMwareTools-*.tar.gz 
cd vmware-tools-distrib/ 
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends libglib2.0-0 
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends build-essential 
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends gcc-4.3 linux-headers-`uname -r` 
sudo ./vmware-install.pl --default 
 
sudo /etc/init.d/networking stop 
sudo rmmod pcnet32 
sudo rmmod vmxnet 
sudo modprobe vmxnet 
sudo /etc/init.d/networking start 

Bitlocker

On a computer, protecting your user account's data with a login password only protects against unauthorized login but not against anyone who has physical access to the computer. This person can simply insert a bootable device into the computer's USB port, boot from it, and have full access to the data on the computer. This means if your leave your computer unattended for a few minutes, there might be enough time for this person to steal your data without your even knowing because he does not need to walk away with your computer.

However, when the harddrive on your computer is encrypted, any unauthorized person who has physical access to your computer cannot access the data on it because the entire drive is encrypted. With that said, you can just encrypt your user's profile to get the same protection but this only affects your profile. If you per chance store sensitive data outside your user profile, then there is no protection for it when the unauthorized person has physical access to the computer.

On a Windows 10 machine, whole drive encryption can easily be done using the built-in BitLocker. Setting it up is very simple and straight forward. However, it does require that the Windows 10 is Professional or Enterprise version. If your Windows 10 is the Enterprise version, the computer is most likely maintained by your company's IT department. As such, it may already be encrypted with either Bitlocker or some other method. If not, talk to your IT department if you are concerned about data breaches.

The steps to use Bitlocker to encrypt the drive can be found on the Internet including myriad videos on YouTube. As with all things with computer security, back up your computer's data before trying anything. There is a chance that ironically, you lock yourself out of your own data so the backup is the insurance. In general, you need to back up valuable data regardless.

Windows Setup: Installing using the MBR or GPT partition style

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/windows-setup-installing-using-the-mbr-or-gpt-partition-style

In general, when you install Windows 10, you should install it under UEFI mode to get additional features. Other than making the boot up faster, it also enables multi boot with other operating systems such as Linux. Each OS needs its own partition. With GPT disk, you can get more than 4 primary partitions. Moreover, given that ChromeOS is all the rage these days, an existing UEFI Windows is needed if you want to dual boot with Neverware's wonderful CloudReady ChromeOS that you can install on any old PC for free. Granted, if the PC is too old, its BIOS cannot run UEFI anyway. In short, if your old computer's BIOS support UEFI and can run Windows Vista or later, you can dual boot it with CloudReady ChromeOS.

Download Windows from Microsoft

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/

Since this is the Microsoft website, the software is legit and more importantly don't have any hidden malware. You need a valid key for Windows 7 to download it though.

Batch Image Processing

ImBatch

http://www.highmotionsoftware.com/products/imbatch

You can also download it from http://www.lo4d.com/

Tool to edit metadata of audio files

MP3TAG

http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

It can bulk edit meta data on many audio files at the same time.

Free Video Editor Avid Media Composer First

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz6MHflf-bw


Avid is one of the major digital video editors out there that is being used to edit Hollywood mainstream movies. This is a scaled down version but its interface is the same as the paid version.


https://my.avid.com/mcfirst

Download ISOs from Microsoft website

https://www.heidoc.net/joomla/technology-science/microsoft/67-microsoft-windows-iso-download-tool

This tool allows an easy and comfortable way to download genuine Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 disk images (ISO) directly from Microsoft's servers, as well as Office 2007, Office 2010, Office 2013, Office 2016, and Office 2011 for Mac.

Cryptomator

While storing your files in the cloud such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive is a great way to make those files available anywhere and any time on any computers, there is one inherited danger of data breach due to a hack because the data is stored on someone else's computer that is accessible over the Internet. Granted, if you have a strong password and use 2-factor authentication, the odds are low that this hack will happen. Nonetheless, if you feel more comfortable if there is a hack, the data stored on these servers is not accessible by the attackers, the you should encrypt the data using your own encryption. This way, even a rogue employee at these cloud storage services cannot see your files.

Cryptomator is one such solution.

https://cryptomator.org/

Download Youtube videos locally

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2476563,00.asp?

The site mentioned that allows you to download videos at 1080p or even 4K is youtubemonkey.com. You don't need to install any program locally. Moreover, there seems to be no limitation on how long the video is. I have successfully downloaded a nature video at 4K that runs an hour and 7 minutes.

If you want a more powerful downloader, try 4K Video Downloader

https://www.4kdownload.com

The free version has some limitations.
https://www.4kdownload.com/buy-ab/videodownloader?source=videodownloader&ui_source=default

Be sure to try out their other programs. Also, visit their blog for some great help on related programs.

https://www.4kdownload.com/blog/

3D Picture

This image was taken with a Lucid VR camera that can be purchased for $400. It takes both still pictures at 4K resolutions and videos at 2K. This sample picture is unfortunately not at 4K so while the 3D effect is there, there is not too much detail.

You need at least a cardboard viewer to see the effect.
https://vr.google.com/cardboard/get-cardboard/

Wi-Fi network roaming with 802.11k, 802.11r, and 802.11v on iOS

For those of you interested in iOS devices supports these latest "advanced" features, here is the document to read.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202628

Below is a copy of their page, saved here in case it is removed.

iOS supports optimized client roaming on enterprise Wi-Fi networks. The 802.11 Working Group standards k, r, and v let clients roam more seamlessly from access point (AP) to AP within the same network.

802.11k

The 802.11k standard helps iOS to speed up its search for nearby APs that are available as roaming targets by creating an optimized list of channels. When the signal strength of the current AP weakens, your device will scan for target APs from this list.

802.11r

When your iOS device roams from one AP to another on the same network, 802.11r uses a feature called Fast Basic Service Set Transition (FT) to authenticate more quickly. FT works with both preshared key (PSK) and 802.1X authentication methods.

iOS 10 includes support for adaptive 802.11r on Cisco wireless networks. Adaptive 802.11r offers FT without the need to enable 802.11r on the configured Cisco wireless network.

802.11v

iOS supports the basic service set (BSS) transition-management functionality of 802.11v on certain devices. BSS transition management allows the network’s control layer to influence client roaming behavior by providing it the load information of nearby access points. iOS takes this information into account when deciding among the possible roam targets.

When you combine 802.11k and 802.11v’s ability to speed up the search for the best target AP with FT's faster AP association, apps can perform faster and you get a better Wi-Fi experience in iOS.

Learn more

Most Wi-Fi network hardware vendors support 802.11k, 802.11v, and 802.11r (FT). You need to enable and configure these features on your Wi-Fi router before your network can use them. Setup varies, so check your Wi-Fi router's manual for details.


The lists below show which iOS devices support 802.11k, 802.11r, and 802.11v. To use 802.11k and 802.11r, you need iOS 6 or later. To use 802.11v, you need iOS 7 or later. To use adaptive 802.11r, you need iOS 10 or later.

802.11k and r
iPhone 4s and later
iPad Pro
iPad Air and later
iPad mini and later
iPad (3rd generation) and later
iPod touch (5th generation) and later

Adaptive 802.11r
iPhone 6s and later
iPhone SE
iPad Pro and later

802.11v
iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, and later
iPad Pro
iPad Air and later
iPad mini 2 and later
iPod touch (6th generation)

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If you like to play around with these new WIFI standards to get faster roaming and efficient use of access points in a multi-access point setting, the cheapest way I can find in terms of access points supporting these 802.11k and r protocols is the Edimax CAP300 for $50 per access point. However, given that this AP can only do the 2.4GHz, I recommend that you get at least a pair of the CAP1200 to get both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz and AC speed.

More info on this:

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-howto/33045-how-to-get-fast-reliable-wi-fi-roaming

http://www.edimax-de.eu/edimax/mw/cufiles/files/faq/SMB/022_How_to_Configure_802_11r_and_802_11k_Under_AP_Controller.pdf